Cliffrose
by StealthyFiction
Summary: Tears run freely, tracing a trail engraved into her flesh like an ancient riverbed. Only the desert can make the river flow. Lizard/OC


This is currently a short one-shot, set rather late in the timeline of a dream I had. I might expand upon it later, adding a background and all that. It was just one of those things I had to write before I forgot it. And, for now, I'm content to leave it lie.

Here's some quick facts that are referenced/needed for this chapter:

1. It's LizardxOFC, but there's not love here, just my poor attempt at "human nature/survival". I love Lizard, just how he was in the movie. (aka evil. lol)

2. It's PRE-HHE. By a few years (think 2003). So everything from the movie will still happen, just in the future where I won't have to write it because this story'll be done. :P That means, it's not a happy ending.

3. The OC was traveling with her father through New Mexico when they were attacked and her father killed.

4. Her father made her promise to survive at all costs. It's the reason she doesn't just give up, even after several months and this "mental breakdown".

5. This scene actually occurs later on in the story itself. It's after the OC helps the mutants get another family, as she pretends to be a hitchhiker when tourists seem too weirded out by Jeb. In the attack, Lizard used his spike belt to kill one of the tourists in front of her, but it cuts open his hand.

**Warnings:** This prologue is pretty clean, but if continued, the story will include violence, gore, death, sexual situations, language, and generally dark themes. If you made it through the movie, you'll be completely fine.

* * *

_After three days in the desert fun,_

_I was looking at a riverbed._

_And the story it told of a river that flowed,_

_Made me sad to think it was dead._

**"A Horse With No Name" – America**

* * *

She creeps towards the bed, bare feet silent on the worn wood. The dresser table is open, and empty.

He is sleeping, his silhouette relaxed. He appears almost peaceful against the sloping wrinkles of the starched sheets illuminated like the red hills surrounding Yuma Flats. But then his crooked teeth glint in the moonlight, his chapped lips pulled back in a permanent sneer. He is the desert, seemingly beautiful but deadly. He is empty, but full of secrets.

His chest rises and falls from beneath the sordid sheets, like a creature burrowed deep in the sand. She imagines the strength of his slightest breath scattering the dunes on the horizon. A quite, raspy groan and she sees the whole desert quake, sees vermin scurry and the moon fall back from the window. He is still alive.

And she is alone with him, this sleeping man, this beast at bay. She reaches for the bed, careful not to stir him. Hesitant.

The blanket flattens beneath her hand as she dips, shakily, until her knees meet the hard, familiar floor. She wants to touch him, to soothe oozing wounds. She wants to brush his silver hair, just barely dancing in her trembling whisper, swirling like the white sand on the cracked, red crust that was at once the desert and his leathery, sunburned skin.

His blue eyes are closed. Without them probing her mind, stalking her form, only the toothed snarl reminds her that this thin, worn man is an agile, ruthless predator. Only the dry lips speak of his strength and sins.

She leans closer to the squalid mattress. It valleys under her touch like the cratered expanse beyond, but Lizard is undisturbed. He is at home here.

And that thought gives her comfort as she raises the gun.

When the barrel brushes against his temple, his eyes dart open, pinpointing her quivering form. His body tenses, but remains still. Adrenaline whooshes in her ears, her heart races from the power. She glares, eyes black as she readies herself for long awaited revenge. She will earn forgiveness.

He says nothing. Even his eyes, sharp blue slits in the dark room, are unquestioning. Worse, they are neither confused, nor fearful, nor even angry. They just watch, full of an intelligence born only of the harshest survival. It is not what she has expected, what she has hoped for, what she had dreamed a fortnight before. He is calm and confident, and she is already shaken. Unprepared.

She panics. She needs to know what he thinks, how he feels in this moment. Wants him to recognize that his life is now in her hands. She needs to understand, needs him to react, to attack, to excuse what she is about to do. She needs him to give her reason in this moment to coat the pillows with his brains and blood, as he has so many others without cause.

He is the heartless monster.

She wants to be innocent.

But he does nothing, even as she clicks the safety, as a dry sob gurgles in her throat. Her faux glare is gone, her lips parted in surprise and desperation.

_Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot._

The barrel spasms against his head, her body sways, her stomach knots, but her eyes are trapped, his piercing gaze trained on hers.

"Please." She pushes the gun against his skull, trying to stop the shaking. She shoves it harder, hoping to push his stare away. She cannot watch as the life leaves his eyes.

"Please!" She begs, voice growing hoarse and weak. She is already withering.

She flexes her finger against the cool trigger, drives the barrel into his cheek. She imagines the hole there, black with gun powder. She sees his gnarled lips slick with torn flesh and his own hot blood.

She is crying. "Stop, Lizard. Please. Stop, stop, stop." His eyes…

He moves so suddenly, she can't stop it. His hand shoots up. The sheets are flung from the bed, the mattress moans, the frame rattles. She screams as he grasps her, his baked skin searing, but she can't fall back, can't escape him. The tears slide down her burnt cheeks as she clenches shut her eyes, waiting for the boom, the crack, the pain. Waiting to die.

But he isn't wrestling the gun away, isn't strangling her, isn't pounding his fist into her face until her jaw is as twisted as his, her nose as flat as Goggle's. He is crushing her hand, pressing the bones of her fingers flush around the handle. She lets out a strangled cry.

"Do it." His voice is just a scratchy whisper, but it is raw with his instinctual power. Her eyes open, fall wide as he squeezes her fingers harder, presses the gun into his cheek. His scaly skin is taunt beneath the barrel, lip split. She watches blood dribble from the wound, and resists the urge to brush it away. She imagines it pooling in his mouth, running down his chin, coating her hands…

He peers at her from the corner of his eyes, the pupils empty slits. Her whole body quakes.

"No, no, no, no, no." She fights to wretch free her arm, her knees scraping on the splintered floor as she tries to fall back. Even with a gun in her hand, she wants to run.

"Shoot. Shoot me, ya _bitch_."

She sobs. "Lizard."

"Do it!" He roars, his angled teeth scraping like a dragon's snapping maw. She hushes him, suddenly terrified that Big Mama might hear. Or Ruby, poor Ruby.

She thrashes, using her free hand to try and push the gun away, to shove him back.

"Lizard let go, let go." She falls forward, the board creaking beneath her knees as she switches tactics. Her racing heart is pressed flush against his own now thudding loudly from adrenaline and excitement. Both her hands struggle to pull back the gun, to probe his iron fingers away. She crumples her whole body against him, scrambling to pull her knees into the bed. Her forehead digs against his, her hair curtaining the twisted scene from the world, from her father's eyes. The gun is pressed between them; the barrel shoved in his cheek, the butt buried into hers.

He smiles widely, baring his teeth.

Tears run freely, tracing a trail engraved into her flesh like an ancient riverbed. Only the desert can make the river flow.

"Please," she whimpers, desperate and hysteric as she lays atop him. Pleading.

He finally shifts, his other arm rising from the bed, his knees bending. He grasps the back of her neck, slick with sweat, and pushed the gun away. It clatters against the wood below, harmless, as he squeezes her neck, pulling her closer until she feels his dark lashes brush hers. Her arms are crushed between them, their legs tangled on the dusty bed.

"Why?" His voice is husky and gruff, untrained, the gravely accent thick. His hot breath fans her throat in steady pants, his sharp eyes raking her face for the smallest reaction. He wants to watch his prey tremble, crumple, backed into a corner she has ran to herself like some dumb animal.

Her eyes dart uneasily, still scared, still lost. Yes, why. Why did she try to kill him? Why did she ever think she could? Of course she has not been the first victim to seek revenge. Or to fail.

She doesn't answer because she can't.

He releases her neck, marks surely forming beside dying bruises. She turns her face from his cold eyes, staring out towards the grimy window. It had been her planned escape route after she blew off Lizard's face. How could she ever think that was possible?

He shifts his hips up, pressing between her legs, a quick buck meant to startle. She shudders, eyes closed. She had no strength to resist.

He drags his gnarled lips across her cheek, smearing his blood. She simply squirms, cries against his chest as he catches her ear between his sharp teeth. "Why? Why didn' ya jus' shoot me?" Her stomach drops at the dark murmur.

"I'm not like you." The response is quiet and half-hearted.

She freezes when he laughs darkly and rolls her from above, hiking up the mangled nighty and straddling her bony hips. She settles into her dent in the mattress, a mold more as perfect for her form as a coffin.

She stares at him, distrusting, from the corners of her eyes. She has to blink away a pool of tears that fall and wet his lips, seized suddenly by his darting tongue.

She is still as the gritty laugh rumbles from his empty rib cage. He catches her hair between his blood caked fingers, twirling strands around his dirty knuckles. He tugs then, softly, to pull her face back to his, a tender touch. One she does not trust, so she resists, afraid that once their eyes meet he will strike.

He growls like a rabid dog, crushes her thighs between his knees and digs his jagged nails into her jaw, turning her head. His feral gaze is threat enough, and she obeys as she always will.

He rises then, crouches back on his haunches, his shadow looming over her. She is consumed by his darkness.

He takes her hand, gently, and presses his palm to hers. Her eyes question, but his say, "Take yer fuckin' answer."

The imprint of the gun is still deep and sore, but she feels the crusty wound in his skin, still bleeding from the slice of the spike belt.

* * *

**AN: **Reviews and critique are welcomed. I know this is weird,and it would make more sense with strain already built up from her months with the mutants, and the horrors she's had to endure. So I hope it's not too I'm-gonna-suddenly-beat-you-upside-the-head-with-:(. Or stupid, don't want that either. lol


End file.
